\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWappear, often to mark some appropriateoccasion. In 1979, Davies' story featuredboth Einstein on the centenary of hisbirth and Little Lord Fauntleroy in TheYear of the Child. In 1967 the centenaryof Confederation evoked the spirit of SirJohn A. Macdonald, and the Universityof Toronto's sesquicentennial in 1977raised the ghosts of King George VI andBishop John Strachan to quarrel overwho made the more significant contributionto the birth of the University. Daviescharacteristically gives the victory toKing George, championing The PleasurePrinciple, over Bishop Strachan's stodgyWork Ethic.The Davies enthusiast will enjoy thesubstantial amount of self-revelation andself-parody in Davies' stories, which arein this respect similar to the earlierMarchbanks diaries with the Marchbankspersona eliminated. "Oh, don't be sopompous," the wife of the UniversityPresident reproves him, and he is similarlypunctured by many another dignitary,living and dead. The Davies scholarwill find a couple of interesting connectionswith Davies' novels. The 1969 story"Refuge of Insulted Saints," in which amultitude of saints seek refuge at Massey,is clearly related to Dunstan Ramsay'sfascination with odd saints in Fifth Business,and the 1978 story, "The Xerox inThe Lost Room," contains a sketch forJohn Parlabane of The Rebel Angels.Most interesting of all is the aspect ofpsychic truth in the stories. As the firstreveals Davies' trepidations about whathistory will make of his showing as firstMaster of Massey College, the last showshis attempt to cope with his reluctanceto step down. The whole is in keepingwith his lifelong emphasis on psychicbalance; the stories minister to this needin himself and his audience. The frequentappearance of ghosts at MasseyCollege he claims is easily attributable tothe fact that it is "a Temple of Reason.""There is in Nature a need for balance,a compensating principle which demandsin our case that where there is too muchrationality there should be occasionaloutbreaks of irrationality." Not just Massey,but Canada, Davies claims, "needsghosts, as a dietary supplement, a vitamintaken to stave off that most dreadfulof modern ailments, The Rational Rickets."The supernatural and the comicblend with the elite and the erudite toproduce High Spirits.SUSAN STONE-BLACKBURN*** MARIA LEACH, ed., Funk & Wagnall'sStandard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology,and Legend. Fitzhenry & Whiteside, $43.95.This paperback reprint of the 1972 editionis welcome, despite the drawbacks of date(there has been much formal analysis of folklorein recent years that does not get acknowledgedhere). Like comparable dictionaries thiswork provides rudimentary identifications ofnames and titles and terminology — everythingfrom "Selene" to "The Princess and the Pea"and "reductio ad absurdum." The net is wide.Curiously, absences occur where one wouldexpect solid information: coyote and manitouare there, but I looked in vain for D'Sonoquaand for Damelahamid, for example — indeedWest Coast Indian culture is ill served indetail. But one strength of the work is therecurring series of general essays on themes,forms, and social contexts of mythology indifferent societies. Eugenie Voegelin on NorthAmerican Indian Mythology provides a widerangingoverview, of the sort that could leadreaders along productive comparative paths —if only the dictionary supported the generalwith a wider range of specifics.